The Difficulty: Creativity, Meaning & the Hard Work of a Life

Why would Chad and Shelley say that radical responsibility is a major commitment? Why would it be one of the foundations for beginning to make huge shifts in your learning and personal growth?

Tune into today's episode and find out why taking complete responsibility for the conditions you create in your life is all on you and your choices.

What could go wrong?

Time Stamps:

1:04--What exactly do mean by what it means to take radical responsibility?

3:10--This is counter-cultural. We immediately and automatically blame

5:18--How we're naturally defensive to what happens when stress emerges

8:40--This is not easy work, but it's possible work

9:00--A simple tool for practicing radical responsibility

Show Notes:

We still offer our flagship burnout coaching package. We also offer packages for those seeking clarity and reconnecting to their life purpose–and we do this work with individuals and couples. Reach out to us if you’d like to book a discovery call and learn more about our coaching packages.

Want to learn more about the role stress plays in your life, and discover your blueprint for how to handle it based on your Enneagram type and subtype? 

Order a copy of Chad’s book Shock Point or order an ebook here.

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Big Self Show hosts, Chad and Shelley get together to explore their takeaways from Chad's conversation with Rob Cross and Karen Dillon and their new book, The Microstress Effect.

Shelley emphasizes the important role that our own personality plays in creating the ongoing conditions of our stress. She opens up about a couple of ways her own personality has dictated the terms of her ongoing stress patterns.

Time Stamps:

1:18--Most of the stress we experience is psychologically based

3:04--Shelley describes two addictive patterns in her own personality's operating system

5:36--Can we always disrupt what our personality patterns are doing when we're surrounded by the conditions of our culture?

Show Notes:

The Microstress Effect: How Little Things Pile Up and Create Big Problems -- and What To Do About It

Ready to learn how to improve your team’s communication, trust, leadership, or overall performance? 

We are booking workshops for Q2 and Q3 as we speak. We offer two-hour, half-day, and full-day training. Your team will come away with tools to improve performance immediately, as well as how to implement cultural changes you want to embody. Reach out and book a discovery call with Chad and let’s have a conversation about what your team or organization needs and we can get you scheduled now. 

Want to learn more about the role stress plays in your life, and discover your blueprint for how to handle it based on your Enneagram type and subtype? 

Order a copy of Chad’s book Shock Point or order an ebook here.

Leave us a review and subscribe on Apple iTunes or Subscribe on Spotify

Find us at bigselfschool.com

Join us on LinkedIn

Welcome to Season 5 of the Big Self Show, episode 122!

We kick off this season with an exploration from a brand new release, The Microstress Effect, by Rob Cross and Karen Dillon. Conventional wisdom for coping with stress has often focused on finding ways to "steel" yourself to endure, through such practices as mindfulness and meditation. And recent research has highlighted the importance of relationships to our physical and mental well-being. We have probably heard that loneliness has been linked to cardiovascular disease, depression, anxiety and numerous other ailments. This is all important data, but hugely important in the scope of the work is to figure out what to do about and how to make life better here and now.

Finding ways to identify and remove negative interactions can make a significant difference in your life. And that's what our conversation was all about.

Time Stamps:

3:56--Microstress defined

5:50--An accumulation until the question, "How did I get here?"

6:40--The 14 micro stresses

10:30--Are we more stressed or less stressed since the pandemic?

12:20--The conundrum of being so incredibly stressed and yet we also have so much more control over what we do with our time

16:38--How leaders can inadvertently cause stress in their teams

19:07--What we can learn from the ten percenters

25:15--How mindfulness and yoga can help, but sometimes just to increase your capacity to managing your internal grit

26:10--How connections are vital in building resilience

27:45--The single takeaway our audience must get

Show Notes:

The Microstress Effect: How Little Things Pile Up and Create Big Problems -- and What To Do About It

Be sure and grab yourself a copy of Chad's groundbreaking book on stress, Shock Point: The Enneagram in Burnout and Stress

Leave us a review and subscribe on Apple iTunes or Subscribe on Spotify

Find us at bigselfschool.com

Join us on LinkedIn

Today we share a wide-ranging conversation with Parker Palmer. From acts of rebellion to the hidden wholeness of the world to the integration of the inner and outer life, as well as teaching and leadership, this conversation is rich in wisdom and hope.

We have followed Parker Palmer’s work for literally decades, and are both thrilled and honored to have him on our podcast. This opportunity to get a chance to meet him and reflect with him on the condition of the world right now was a real gift. We are grateful for his work and will continue beating the drum of joining "soul and role" in discovering our hidden wholeness in this corner of the world.

Check out The Center for Courage and Renewal or just a few of Parker Palmer's books here:

The Center for Courage and Renewal

Let Your Life Speak: Listening for the Voice of Vocation

A Hidden Wholeness: The Journey Toward an Undivided Life

Time Stamps:

3:32--Shelley shares with Parker how his work mentored her when she went through a dark time

6:13--Parker begins his story as to how he started on his academic career, but felt like it wasn't enough

11:35--Shelley asks Parker about the idea of the unfolding of calling

20:20--Walking in the woods is a contemplative exercise

24:39--The idea that it's an act of rebellion to try to show up in the world as a whole person

30:00--The idea that for perspective, the world really does go on without us

35:57--Parker's truer calling was in writing and sharing his ideas rather than activism and what he felt he "ought" to do

39:03--Failure hurts, so it's not easy to separate ourselves from it

46:20--The other thread that runs through this is that you have maintain your inner life

51:29--What's the smallest thing we can do today to move us in our purpose

56:02--Life on the Mobius Strip

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This work largely comes from Chad's recently released book, Shock Point: The Enneagram in Burnout and Stress. We invite you to check it out anywhere books are sold through the global online marketplace.

We’re covering this information as a part of the Big Self Podcast for three reasons:

(1) Towards the larger goal of increasing self-awareness. If you are able to assimilate this information in your head as knowledge, it’s going to be more possible for you to incorporate your dispositions into your working knowledge of your Self-Observation practices, which will lead to your Self-Inquiry, which will lead to integrated changes in your transformed personality, through Self-Development.

(2) It’s good to know about others in order to be able to communicate most effectively, understanding their dispositions especially to stress and interpersonal relationships.

(3) Finally, it gives us all compassion for ourselves and each other, which is one of the most important principles to recognize when beginning this work. Be gentle with yourself.

Time Stamps:

5:44--Psychological Roots and Key Patterns that Create Stress for Eights

10:38--Psychological Roots and Key Patterns that Create Stress for Nines

15:16--Psychological Roots and Key Patterns that Create Stress for Ones

20:25--Psychological Roots and Key Patterns that Create Stress for Twos

25:25--Psychological Roots and Key Patterns that Create Stress for Threes

31:14--Psychological Roots and Key Patterns that Create Stress for Fours

35:39--Psychological Roots and Key Patterns that Create Stress for Fives

40:31--Psychological Roots and Key Patterns that Create Stress for Sixes

46:25--Psychological Roots and Key Patterns that Create Stress for Sevens

Click here to order a copy of Shock Point: The Enneagram in Burnout and Stress.

Follow up with us and check out our Burnout Coaching Package here.

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While there are nine distinctive ways that personalities show up in the world, there are also by contrast, very similar ways that all people look when their ego isn't in charge.

With steady practice in Self-Observation, Self-Inquiry, and Self-Development, you will see a healthier response to your day-to-day responses.

These are the six ways a healthy ego looks like in relationships.

Time Stamps:

5:56--Three stages of observation learning

12:32--The six ways beginning with #1

16:22--The second way a healthy ego looks

17:49--The third way a healthy ego looks

22:51--The fourth way a healthy ego looks

26:21--The fifth way a healthy ego looks

29:33--The six and final way a healthy ego looks

Click here to order a copy of Shock Point: The Enneagram in Burnout and Stress.

Follow up with us and check out our Burnout Coaching Package here.

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We may learn about the false self, we may learn how to hide features of false self from others so that we seem genuine, but hiding and merely learning about are not the same thing as authentic transformation. And that's the challenging subject matter we tackle on today's episode.

The way of the false self is invested in your outer identity and what you possess, whereas the way of the true self is invested in who you are and what you can share. It’s not by efforting that I come to know my true self. The path of finding my true self begins with the awareness that I am “shadowed by an illusory person: a false self.” 

First clearly see your false self. And begin the unmasking with deep grace and self-compassion. There are plenty of reasons we “mask up” in our early lives. And when we're ready to move beyond those masks, we have to be tender with ourselves in much the same way we can imagine the Source or God would love you unconditionally. 

Time Stamps:

1:50: How today's episode is a little different from a lot of our episodes

5:42: How many people choose not to raise their level of awareness and how that development impacts the future you create one way or the other

7:43: The work isn't easy, but what else would you rather be doing exactly?

10:19: The ego resists when it gives something which it doesn't have, it's finite

16:27: Releasing the false self can be the key to finding the true self

22:34: Merton says we should shift from the circumference to the center

26:22: Story of Akiba on his deathbed bemoaning the fact that he had not lived a life like Moses

28:16: Shelley shares a personal story as an example, and Chad follows with one of his own

37:07: It's who you really are, your essential nature

46:04: The idea of dismantling false illusions, and how so much of this is the stress you're carrying around

Show Notes:

Seeds of Contemplation by Thomas Merton

Wishful Thinking by Frederick Buechner

What the Mystics Know by Richard Rohr

Click here to order a copy of Shock Point: The Enneagram in Burnout and Stress.

Follow up with us and check out our Burnout Coaching Package here.

Subscribe on Spotify

Traumatic events happen to the best of us. Some are more ordinary than others, like car accidents or losing a job, and others are bigger. Whether big T or little t, traumas are crisis’ that happen to all of us, it’s not some rare thing.

Resilience is about using the crisis or the suffering to grow and launch yourself into a whole new beginning. Beyond just recovering from setbacks, resilience helps us navigate all life challenges, and end up the better for them. Resilience is a mindset that enables us to seek out new experiences and view life as a work in progress.

Here’s a simple framework to think about the work that goes into building resilience: Pain + reflection = progress. Pain is going to happen. But pain itself doesn’t equal progress.

And that’s really what we mean when we talk about bouncing forward. It helps us move from mere surviving to thriving. Today we get to our how. How do you develop resilience and use these essential skills? 

Time Stamps:

3:15: The challenges we face in life are not meant to be some sort of punishment. But an invitation to change.

6:57: 83% of people think they're resilient (but only just over half really are)

13:06: Researchers have shown that resilience is basically optimism, self mastery, control, flexible thinking, and the ability to cope with stress when they're when they're doing their research.

15:11: The Grateful Living practice

24:32: The Lovingkindness Meditation practice

33:53: Quality Relationships

Show Notes:

Bouncing Forward: The Art and Science of Cultivating Resilience by Michaela Haas

The Power of Resilience by Brooks and Goldstein

The Good Life by Robert Waldinger

Click here to order a copy of Shock Point: The Enneagram in Burnout and Stress.

Follow up with us and check out our Burnout Coaching Package here.

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Each Enneagram personality type have their own superpowers--their ways and means of functioning in the world--that gets them through life, helps them to survive. But these very unconscious characteristics can also create their own versions of stress. They are patterns that we usually don't even fully understand. We also don't know how to break free of them and to make them more conscious, observable, and understandable.

Today, we dive deep into what Fives, Sixes, and Sevens (the head types) do to survive and manage their way through life. We also look at the ways these patterns not only handle stress but also create their own stress.

For each type, we also give you coaching tips and tools on how to specifically address these issues in your efforts to create a more sustainable relationship with stress, and with all of your relationships (including your relationship with yourself).

Time Stamps:

2:03--Why you should listen to all the types regardless of your type, and how you are "not" your type

6:05--Fives: The Walls that Hold You Inside

26:00-Sixes: Trusting Without Testing

42:15--Sevens: A Little of This, A Little of That (a Lot)

Check out our holiday offer: 20% off our Typing Package. Find out more at bigselfschool.com/enneagram-typing-package or schedule a call to discuss more.

Click here to pre-order a discounted ebook copy of Shock Point: The Enneagram in Burnout and Stress.

Follow up with us and check out our Burnout Coaching Package here.

Subscribe on Spotify

Each Enneagram personality type have their own superpowers--their ways and means of functioning in the world--that gets them through life, helps them to survive. But these very unconscious characteristics can also create their own versions of stress. They are patterns that we usually don't even fully understand. We also don't know how to break free of them and to make them more conscious, observable, and understandable.

Today, we dive deep into what Twos, Threes, and Fours (the heart types) do to survive and manage their way through life. We also look at the ways these patterns not only handle stress but also create their own stress.

For each type, we also give you coaching tips and tools on how to specifically address these issues in your efforts to create a more sustainable relationship with stress, and with all of your relationships (including your relationship with yourself).

Time Stamps:

3:32--The heart types and the central core operating emotion

4:30--Twos: Deflating the Pride Balloon

23:24--Threes: Who You Are When You're Not Succeeding

34:18--Fours: Endless Comparing and Introjecting

Check out our holiday offer: 20% off our Typing Package. Find out more at bigselfschool.com/enneagram-typing-package or schedule a call to discuss more.

Click here to pre-order a discounted ebook copy of Shock Point: The Enneagram in Burnout and Stress.

Follow up with us and check out our Burnout Coaching Package here.

Subscribe on Spotify